Miranda knew they should have turned back. She'd known it a long time ago, when they'd first set foot in this godforsaken station and machinery started moving by itself. VIs were not supposed to kill people. They were not supposed to scream over the station intercom or possess geth or make the lights flicker so Miranda's heart tripped in her chest. If anyone had asked, she would have told them that she wasn't scared, but it wouldn't have been the truth.

And that was before Shepard touched some bloody control console and got her nervous system invaded by the very VI that had been toying with him this whole mission.

"Shepard!" Miranda ran to where the commander had fallen and knelt beside her convulsing body. Shepard's eyes were open, but glowing green and fixed on nothing. Her muscles were spasming like she was in the middle of a nightmare she couldn't escape. Miranda wondered if that's what was going on in her mind right now. She didn't know; she hadn't prepared for this.

And she had no idea what to do now. Should she slap her? Shake her? Medi-gel her? Would there even be a Shepard left over once the VI was done with whatever it was doing? Would the entire Lazarus Project turn out to be for naught?

Miranda never panicked, but she was dangerously close to it right now.

"What's the matter with her?" Jacob cried, standing back like the affliction might be contagious.

"I don't know." Miranda was disturbed to find her voice ragged. She pushed away rising emotion and focused on cradling Shepard's head so she wouldn't accidentally give herself a concussion. "She touched the panel and then collapsed. The VI must have found an access point through her cybernetics."

"What's it doing?"

"I don't know, Jacob!" Miranda snapped. It was easier to get angry at him than acknowledge that she was very, very afraid. Afraid that four billion credits and two years of her life were about to go to waste. Afraid that Shepard would die for the second time here, on some lonely planet with only two presumed terrorists and a computer program for company. Afraid that, in her absence, the Normandy crew and thus humanity's best hope for survival would fall apart.

Not because she was personally attached, of course. Miranda did not get attached.

It was due to logic alone that she looked down into Shepard's pale, stricken face then and thought, please don't die. Not again.